How I got to know Rabbi Twerski

At the turn of the millennium, I was a multimedia programmer for Davka corporation, creating computer games for Jewish children. My work necessitated access to the world wide web, and as a normal male, I found it a struggle to avoid inappropriate material. This was before the advent of internet filters, and the Jewish community in those days still preferred to ignore the issue of the internet altogether, rather than address it. The issue was largely swept under the rug, and dialogue about the issue was considered taboo. Jewish publications like Hamodia and Yated were forbidden from even mentioning the word internet in their articles and columns.

In order to keep strong, I developed for myself a number of techniques which I found helpful. I began to see on various Jewish forums that I was not alone, and many very frum people were finding the internet to be a huge challenge. Many were simply throwing in the towel and believed it was just too difficult to win. I began sharing some of the methods that had were helping me on these forums and started getting very good feedback. People started posting that they were inspired to give it another try, and began sharing their own strategies and attitudes that were helping them. I had an idea to make a small website where I would bring together tips, advice and stories, so I could point people to a place where they could find inspiration and techniques. After we had a few pages of information on the site, someone suggested beginning a forum of our own, and that’s when things really took off. Suddenly there was a place in the Jewish community for people to post anonymously about their struggles and share inspiration. Hundreds of people started joining, and over time it developed into a close knit community of support and camaraderie. People began asking for daily inspiration, so I decided to start sending out chizuk emails each day, consisting mostly of inspiring posts from our forums. As more and more techniques and ideas were developed on the website and shared by the community, I decided to compiled the GYE Handbook, which was basically a range of strategies and attitudes, organized in progressive order, from the typical normal struggles all the way to full blown addiction.

It was around this time that Rabbi Twerski entered the picture. My parents had been fans of Rabbi Twerski’s books ever since I could remember, and I had also been close with one of his grandchildren while learning in the Yeshiva of Philadelphia in the 1990’s. I realized that as a Rabbi and a psychiatrist in one, Rabbi Twerski could possibly be very helpful to our fledgling website. In Sept 2008, I reached out to him by phone, describing the challenge that so many people were facing and told him about the website and forum that we had put together. He responded enthusiastically and confided that he had even considered a website once to help people with this but he said:

Initially, when I thought about this a long time ago, the question was, inasmuch as internet is involved in the problem, can you have someone go to the internet to deal with it? But I suppose there's no choice, they're going to go to the internet anyways.

After reviewing the website he responded:

There’s no question that this is an excellent place to refer to, I may even possibly make some contributions to it. I think that some of the guys in SA (Sexaholics Anonymous 12 Step groups) here have to know about this, I don’t know if they do. I will try to get the word around. Have a lot of Hatzalacha and I’ll try to and help in whichever way reasonably I can.

His policy in 2008 was not to give endorsements. A bit more than a year later, he shared with us that he was getting many calls about this issue and had nowhere to send them. He was excited that there was a place for people to get help and support. At that point, he agreed to send us a warm endorsement:

The author (left) and his partner Yechezkel Stelzer, at the Parlor meeting at R' Avraham Wolfson's house in 2010

Over the years, Rabbi Twerski sent us many articles that he wrote on the topic, and answered many sticky questions that came up. When my partner joined me in 2010 and the website started to grow, we began fundraising so we could turn GYE into a really professional website with many tools and services. Rabbi Twerski graciously agreed to come speak at our first parlor meeting in Sept of 2010 at the home of the well known askan and philanthropist R’ Avraham Wolfson. During his talk, he read a letter of a young man who had reached out to him for help ending his letter with the words “You are reading the last gasp of a drowning soul”. Rabbi Twerski said that he had nothing to answer this young man since GuardYourEyes wasn’t around yet, but he stressed that when he gets calls now, he finally has where to send people for help.

Once when we were in Toronto together with Rabbi Twerski in 2011 when he was already 80 years old, he came with us in a snowstorm to meet with potential donors, and even joined us to knock on doors!  He also came once to speak at a dinner in Monroe in the Chassidic community of Satmar, where we launched our Yiddish website in 2013.

Over time, I became very close with him, and when he moved to Israel in 2014, I would often visit him. He would do literally anything he could to help our organization, picking up the phone to call potential donors, joining us on Skype meetings with donors, and speaking at various functions despite his weakened state. In 2017 he put out a book called “Teshuvah & Recovery” which contained an entire section of writings from myself and GuardYourEyes members. He autographed tens of copies of the book for our donors, and was always available to answer questions that came up. He was exceedingly humble, and even consulted with us on various cases that came to him.

On my many visits to his Jerusalem home in Katamon, we shared divrei Torah, experiences, and he shared with me stories of his life. On a visit to him in Aug 2019, I asked him if he was still writing books. He told me that he used to write two books a year, but now he had to sweat buckets to write one paragraph. He shared that he had written a few pages of a new book, but did not know what would develop and if he would manage to finish it. I asked him what the topic was and he said it was based on the Chassidic idea that we need to uplift the physical world and bring it into the spiritual realm. Indeed, this was his last book, and on my last visit to him in December 2020 together with my partner, just a few weeks before he passed away, he told us that book he had been working on was finally coming out. He had called it “Talis & Tefillin, Bagels & Lox”, and he told us it was his 90th book, containing a hodge podge of everything he remembered from the last 90 years. I believe that the topic of this book was no coincidence. For uplifting the physical to the spiritual was a microcosm of his whole life. I don’t know of anyone in our generation who merited to go down into the physical world, into the world of academia, medicine, psychology, and deal with the most broken people in society like addicts, yet uplift the entire world with him to the realm of the spiritual.

Rabbi Twerski as never afraid to speak out about issues that were considered taboo, whether it was spousal abuse in the frum community, or addictions to alcohol, gambling, and towards the end of his life, the prevalent addiction to pornography. Having founded the Gateway Rehabilitation center in Pittsburg which helped thousands of alcoholics, Rabbi Twerski had a special affinity for helping people with addictions. But the only addiction Rabbi Twerski himself suffered from, was in his words, an addiction to writing books.

Indeed, on that last visit, he shared that he was actually working on his 91st book, which he said would be for bochurim who don’t know much about the Gedolim of the previous generations. He wanted to put together a book with short chapters on many of our famous tzadikim, in an easy to read fashion, that would sum up the main character of these TZadikim in just a few pages. He even asked for our help in researching these anecdotes. He mentioned that he had finished writing chapters already on the Shagas Aryeh, Reb Yisrael Salant and the Chofetz Chaim, but unfortunately he passed away a few weeks on Jan 31, 2021 (19 Shvat 5781) at the age of 90, and was never able to finish the book.

Rabbi Twerski was always there to help GYE until his final days. Only 6 weeks before his passing, he wrote a warm endorsement for a book we are putting out together with Dr. Shloimi Zimmerman on how to speak to our children about kedusha issues. In the endorsement, Rabbi Twerski compares the epidemic that our youth are forced to contend with, to the plague of Covid-19. He mentions that although a vaccine has recently come out for Covid-19, no vaccine was yet available for our youth.

Rabbi Twerski's last Haskama, written only weeks before his passing

Unfortunately, Rabbi Twerski himself caught Covid-19 about a month after getting the first dose of the vaccine, just before he was scheduled to get the second dose.

Shortly after his passing, I compiled this book in his memory, containing many articles and correspondence between Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski, MD and myself, as well as with the members of the GuardYourEyes.com community.

It is my fervent hope that this book serves to inspire more people, to continue his legacy, and be a tribute to the memory of this great yet humble man that I am so grateful to have known.

Yaakov Nadel,

Co-Founder

Guardyoureyes.com

The author (center) with the GYE team, visiting Rabbi Twerski Dec 2020, only a few weeks before his passing.